Book review: 'The Man Who Bombed Karachi: A Memoir' by Admiral S.M. Nanda

Book review: 'The Man Who Bombed Karachi: A Memoir' by Admiral S.M. Nanda

The memoirs of a gallant seafarer become a captivating chronicle of Indian Navy's unrecorded moments of triumphs and travails.

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Ashok K. Mehta

December 29, 2003

ISSUE DATE: December 29, 2003

UPDATED: May 17, 2012 17:43 IST

The Man Who Bombed Karachi: A Memoir by Admiral S.M. Nanda

What exactly do chiefs of naval staff (CNS) do? A former CNS had us believe that they spent a lot of time squabbling with colleagues about promotions and plotting against governments to show them who the boss was.

Thankfully Admiral S.M. Nanda's book is neither about pettiness nor about delusions of grandeur. Instead it is a gallant seafarer's detached story about his life and times and serves as an important source of information about events of which there is no authoritative record.

Nanda recounts life on Manora, an island off the coast of Karachi, where he spent an unspoilt childhood and developed an affection for the sea. His first brush with politics, in the days when it was unavoidable even for soldiers and sailors, was during the naval uprising in 1946.

It is strange that Bollywood has not been inspired to make a film on one of the most dramatic events of the freedom struggle. Nanda is a living witness to the uprising. Sardar Patel's intervention, telling the men that it was better to lose the battle to win the independence war, finally defused the crisis.

Although the navy had no particular role in the 1962 war, a goodwill visit to Shanghai in 1958 aboard the INS Mysore with Nanda as the chief of personnel should have warned India about impending events. The Chinese Navy welcomed the Indian visitors with open arms and on departure, presented two bottles of beer to every sailor on board, but a few weeks later it lodged a protest with the Indian government that its territorial waters had been violated by the Mysore.

RARE ADMIRAL: The inimitable S.M.Nanda

Since then, till 1971, Nanda tried to explain to Indian and foreign dignitaries alike that it was in India's best interests to take the navy seriously. He was one of the brains behind the setting up of the Mazagon docks and in an age when involving the private sector in defence was anathema, got the Mahindras to contribute to India's nascent shipbuilding industry.

The Naval Ship Design Organisation owes its birth to him. This experience would serve him well as the chief of the Shipping Corporation of India after retirement. But it is the role of the Indian Navy in the 1971 war that Nanda illuminates for military historians.

When the USS Enterprise reached the Malacca Straits and prepared to enter the Bay of Bengal, it was clear that coercion and diplomacy were both at work. Indira Gandhi asked him whether he thought the US would go to war with India. Nanda said he would order captains of Indian ships that if they came across American vessels, "they should exchange identities and invite them for a drink".

Later in a conversation with Admiral Elmo Zumwalt, commander of the US Navy who had a celebrated difference of opinion with Henry Kissinger on how far America should go in preventing India from attacking Pakistan, Zumwalt told Nanda that his instructions would have helped avoid any inadvertent confrontation in the region, indicating this could have been a possibility.

Nanda's ambitions for a bigger role for the Indian Navy were belittled by some colleagues. But in the true tradition of a soldier, he passed the baton to some of those who mocked his efforts, not letting it vitiate his judgement.

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